


i am always a few steps behind

by bogliasco



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Not actually ghosts, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 13:11:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15730083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogliasco/pseuds/bogliasco
Summary: Traveling home after the end of the world is no easy task. It's even harder for Tony when he starts seeing visions of people he's accepted as dead. Maybe it's another cruel twist. Maybe the trauma of the Battle of Titan destroyed his mind completely. (Maybe, they're real. After all, how else could they know what they do?) It's not easy, balancing a new world order, the "Avengers", and his ghostly companions. But, if anyone can manage it, it's Tony motherfucking Stark.





	1. i can't help myself

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't even gonna be a fic it's gonna be a quilt of tropes stitched together with bad prose and also my deep love for tony stark. shoutout to my main bitch!!!! also i have no plans or outlines or anything professional for this fic so the tags and relationships and whatever else are super minimal and empty. maybe i'll get around to it?? 
> 
> p.s. lowkey looking for a beta or someone to whoop my ass into writing this so hmu !!!!!!!

It had been three days since everyone had died. Tony had to repeat that word often, to keep from drifting off in a feverish haze of denial. Died. Died. Died. Just because there were no bodies didn't mean anything- he still remembered the smell of burning flesh, shreds of army uniform, splattered fluid that was too thick to be just blood. A corpse was not a prerequisite for death.

He looked up blearily as Nebula stalked over. She had disappeared right after the deaths, and hadn't returned until now. "I found it. Get up."

He blinked at her. "Found what?"

"The Milano. The ship. Quill was smart enough to keep it out of the wreck, and it's still pilotable. Get the fuck up." He didn't respond, too busy staring at his grimy hands. He didn't dare touch anything, for fear of disturbing the dust sunken into the creases. He was carrying what was left of Peter. 

"Get up!" Nebula said, and this time, her voice cracked with fear. Tony looked up, and caught the tail end of her expression. Young, scared, lost. Orphaned by a genocidal maniac who had succeeded in killing her sister, before killing the rest of the universe. A child who never had the chance to stay young, a child with body parts torn off and replaced, a child with no tear ducts because she was engineered that way. She was grieving too, but she had gotten up and trekked three days round to find a way off Titan. He would help her accomplish that, if nothing else.

Tony struggled to a sitting position, breath rattling. The nanites had done their best, but they only managed the superficial. Ironic that Nebula had come back with a plan in time to watch Tony die. A wound from his own tech, no less.

Nebula seemed to sense his thoughts. "You're not dying on this godforsaken planet. What do you have left of your suit?" Tony pointed at the cylinder of nanites that weren't sealing his wound shut. The mini arc reactors were peppered throughout. Nebula plucked one out, cracking the casing like it wasn't specially engineered to resist blunt force (and sharp shields). Her jaw dropped.

Tony watched distantly. He had seen that reaction to his tech often enough, though he did admit the lack of greed in her eyes was reassuring. Still, he knew his reactors inside and out. There was no shrapnel to extract this time, so shoving that into his wound would just be a faster death. Maybe she could power the ship with them after he died? It was funny. Tony-before-Titan would've worried about her misusing the reactors, causing explosions, bringing it back to Earth. Tony-after-Titan hoped the explosion would look good from hell.

"Stark, do you know what you have here?" Nebula crouched beside him. "I didn't think dimensional channels existed anymore, yet you manage to have dozens of them on your suit and not even use them. How did you find th- never mind. We have more pressing matters." 

"Dimensional channels? No, they-"

"Have they ever done anything unexplained? Something Terra would call magic, I suppose." Tony thought of Loki's mad eyes, glinting blue behind the scepter, the anticlimactic 'tink' of magic dissipating. Maybe.

She opened a panel in her arm, drawing out a scalpel-like blade that was so fine the point disappeared from sight, yet still reflected light. "I'll use the atomic blade to divide them, but the absorption process won't be as easy."

"Absorption?" His head was still spinning from the effort of remaining upright, let alone processing that his arc reactors were some mystical force. 

Nebula was carving away at the reactor. Pieces of crystal-like shards fell onto the ground and stopped glowing. "You'll insert the sharp ends of these under the skin at your body's natural anchor points. They'll absorb the necessary energy from alternate dimensions and heal you."

"Alternate dimensions," he said flatly. She didn't look up from the carving.

A few minutes later, she held a set of what looked like crystal needles, still glowing. When she looked pointedly at him, he nodded. Not like his life could get worse at this point. She helped him struggle to a standing position, before tapping the shards in around his wound. It felt like acupuncture needles, but he had never seen needles sink through the skin and disappear. It reminded him faintly of Ebony Maw impaling Strange, and he had to look away from his own body for fear of screaming.

The difference was so sudden he didn't have a chance to recognize the shift. He was suddenly standing all the way up, not hunched over, and the myriad bruises and probable concussion were gone. Nebula looked awed.

"Do you... want one?" Tony offered awkwardly as the nanites encapsulated his body once more. He held out one of the reactors, trying not to be freaked out by how good he felt physically. Maybe he had actually died and this was his brain's last hurrah?

"You can't offer things like that casually," Nebula said, although it was hoarse and she kept darting looks at his seamless torso. 

"I promise you, whatever this offer is, it isn't casual."

"Stark, you don't know what you hold in your hand or what damage it could do, especially in my hands." She held up her arms to make an emphasis- one blue, one metal.

Tony didn't have a response to that. He was too busy looking over her shoulder, at the Milano. There was a figure stumbling down the steps of the ship.

"Get behind me," he hissed, before the helmet rushed over his head. He looked at the display and saw- nothing. No heat signatures, no air disturbances. The external camera couldn't even capture an image. Whoever it was, they were good.

"What are you looking at?" Nebula asked. Tony let the helmet fold back in, before looking back at the ship. The figure had reached the bottom of the disembarking steps and had stopped there, gesturing wildly in their direction. It was a poorly designed trap.

"Who are you?" Tony said, letting the sound reverb a bit through the suit. A tinny yell from the ship. He strode forward angrily. He was in no mood to deal with this. The only other people on Titan he had considered allies were gone. Whoever it was had to be an enemy.

That is, until Tony got within viewing distance. He slowed to a stop. "What the fuck." He turned to Nebula: she was looking at the ship, but gave no indication of seeing what Tony saw. "What the fuck."

"Iron suit dude! You can see me, right? I can't go any further but you need to listen right now."

"I guess I did die," Tony said, ignoring Nebula's worried looks. "Or maybe I've been poisoned. If I was going to hallucinate anybody, I did not expect it would be Missouri Lord."


	2. in every corner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nebula is strangely supportive of a ghost she can't see. "It's the channels," she insists.

"I'm telling you, it's the channels! You don't understand them!"

"Yeah, well I'm pretty sure even dimensional whatever's can't bring back the dead!" Tony exclaimed. They were a good distance from the Milano, at his insistence. The thing that looked like Peter Quill seemed unable to step off of the ship, due to "spiritual connections or whatever, I don't know, that's what Strange said! Dude, stop walking away- dude!". 

"I can't explain that either," Nebula agreed, "but dimensional channels have never been fully understood or documented. Whatever Thanos did with the Stones, there's a chance that the channels reacted with the power and can do things now that weren't possible before."

"What was possible before? I mean, why did you act so surprised when you saw these things?"

Nebula sighed. She deflated a little, the conviction in her voice fading into something pained. "They were essentially artificial Infinity Stones, created by The Other to aid Thanos in his search for the real ones. They resonate with the Stones, and he just followed the vibrations."

"So you're saying I have, what, Infinity Stones Lite embedded in my stomach? That Thanos can track with the Gauntlet?" 

"No, they're powerful enough to repel that. But that's not the point. I'm saying that whatever you saw back there might be the real Quill. The channels have enough power, even cut up like the one you've absorbed, to do things you can't even imagine."

Tony looked back consideringly. Quill- if it was Quill- had stopped his jumping up and down and was sitting dejectedly on the steps. Would it hurt to go back and listen? After all, if this Peter had found a way back to the land of the living, maybe the other- No. It was safer not to go down that route.

"Stark. You are in the midst of something you don't understand. I was Thanos's daughter, and no matter how ashamed of that I am, it is something I will say again if it will make you listen. These channels can help us, if you let them. Go back there and figure out if it's really Quill. We can go from there."

Tony sighed, before nodding sharply and heading back towards the Milano. Quill was tapping his foot anxiously, so Tony sat down next to him, subtly brushing against a leg. There was an echo of resistance, but his gauntlet still went through the suit. Strike one against the back to life theory.

"I know, very ghostly and noncorporeal."

"You know the word corporeal?" Tony asked sarcastically.

"Uh, yeah, totally. Helped that your sorcerer friend went over the pronunciation a few times, I guess, but I totally knew it before." Quill looked less harried now and more expectant.

"So, what's your opening pitch? Ghost? Zombie? Extremely well-extrapolated hallucination?" 

"No, no, and definitely no. I'm one of a kind, hallucination or not. Your sorcerer friend gave me a big speech to memorize and tell you but, one, it sounded boring and also sort of panic inducing, and two, I forgot a lot of it. So, here's my take. Thanos didn't kill us, just trapped us in a limbo dimension. Sorcerer thinks that it's a pocket dimension created by the Gauntlet's power, but no one else really cares. When you were healed with the channels, it created a connection between the Gauntlet dimensions and your body, hence why I'm here harassing you."

Tony said "fuck it" and went all in. If this was a hallucination, it was doing a great job of giving false hope. "There are other people in there with you? Why are you the only one here?"

"I'm getting to that! Anyways, it seems to be location based? And by location, I mean where we got dusted. I'm in here with the sorcerer, Drax and Mantis, and your spider kid. He's worried about you, by the way."

Tony choked back a sob. Quill gallantly pretended not to notice and kept going. "We haven't seen anyone else, but sorcerer dude guesses that there are millions or even billions of small pocket dimensions floating around, each holding some people. As to the whole me being the messenger deal, definitely not my choice, trust me. I'm not the greatest at this, as you can probably tell. Apparently it has something to do with astral connection and spiritual attachment to the Milano? Fuck if I know, but I sure do love my baby." He patted the stairs.

Nebula approached cautiously. "Everything okay, Stark?" She managed to look everywhere but directly at Quill.

"Peachy," Tony managed, trying not to let hope overwhelm him.

"Look, I can prove it to you," Quill insisted. "You don't know Nebula at all, right? So I'll tell you that she hates Tralfadorian meat, which is something you have no way of knowing. So, mental hallucination theory? Disproved. You can check with her, and then we can get this show on the road."

Tony repeated the statement to Nebula, who nodded consideringly towards a spot a few inches to Quill's right. "Didn't think you would pick up on that, but Gamora always said there was something inside that head other than a vacuum. Guess she wasn't entirely wrong." Both of them looked sad for a moment, before shaking it off in an eerily similar manner. Tony held back an inappropriate smile. Maybe they had a chance.


	3. expansion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quill manages to go from beacon of hope to complete pain-in-the-ass within the span of an hour.

They were halfway through the next galaxy when Tony finally lost it.

"Quill, sit down and shut up or I swear that I'll cut these channels out myself." Although Tony knew the rest of the galaxy was decades ahead of him in tech, the Milano was intuitive enough that he managed to pilot it with minimal jumps. Nebula was in the co-pilot seat, reading off instructions that didn't make it through the universal translator. Quill just hovered around them, making worried noises whenever Tony pressed a button or insisting loudly that the radio needed to be on or the ship wouldn't fly right.

"I'm just worried about my baby, okay? No need to be a douche about it," Quill said, slumping down into one of the nearby seats. Nebula got up to flick something on a wall panel, and Tony was 95% sure she had figured out where Quill was and managed to walk through him on purpose.

"I'm always careful with tech, especially alien tech that's gonna get me back home."

"Well, I gotta go soon and check back in with the others, and if anything's broken when I get back, I'll kick your ass straight back to Terra," Quill threatened. "Tell Nebula she better not touch my snacks."

Nebula looked bored when Tony repeated the message. "Tell Quill to find a way back to the land of the solid and he can try to stop me." Her voice sounded shaky and hopeful, but her face was blank.

Quill let out an offended gasp before disappearing. The ship was silent.

"If Quill's here, why aren't the other Guardians?" Tony asked suddenly. "Drax and the antenna girl. Weren't they living on this ship too?" 

Nebula shrugged, having gone to the kitchen and back and was chomping loudly on what looked like a blue root. "No idea, but I'm guessing Quill was the only one obnoxious enough to force his way into another dimension. Besides, he's all over this ship."

"What do you mean, all over?"

"He once told us to use a black light. Now I don't lean against the walls anymore."

"Fuck-" Another bout of silence. 

"We should get some sleep. Who knows what else we'll run into on the way to the warp point. First watch?"

"I'll take it," Tony offered. He was too jumpy to sleep, looking around for Quill to appear and relay some more improbable news. It had been- god, it had only been a few days since he had left Earth, and now half the universe was dead, and he was playing astral telephone with a half-human from Missouri and his murderous blue sister-in-law.

Nebula grunted and sat down in the corner of the cockpit, keeping her back to the wall. She finished the last of her root and curled up, nearly whirring to a stop. Tony felt a strange sort of sympathy for her. He knew she was grieving but keeping it together for his sake. He knew she was some sort of mechanic, having maintained her own parts to a polish. He knew she didn't like Trafaldorian meat, whatever the hell that was.

A few hours later, when he had finally stopped turning at every beep of the ship, Tony heard another noise. A strangled shout and then a heaving breath- all too familiar. Nebula had shot to a standing position, her arms raised defensively, her mechanical fingers twitching uncontrollably. "Easy there," Tony said, not moving closer. He knew how the disorientation of post-nightmare wakefulness felt. "You alright there?" 

Her face crumpled. "No-no one's ever asked me that before." He stood up and carefully, slowly, reached out. He didn't ask. The pain in her voice didn't afford questions, and the mommy and daddy and every-family-member issues he could pick out from just those words was enough.

"It's over," he said. "For better or for worse, it's over. What you were dreaming of- it was real then, unfortunately, but it's not real now." That was the mantra that had kept him going through the aftermath of New York, Sokovia, Siberia, you name it. It wasn't very reassuring, but he felt like Nebula wouldn't want false reassurances.

"It's over," she agreed, blankly. Then, stronger, "it's over."

Of course, in the middle of that tense silence, Quill chose to reappear. "Stark!"


End file.
